More than 32k hoax fire service calls in five years

There were more than 32,000 hoax phone calls made to the fire service between 2007 and 2011, according to data obtained by the Fine Gael TD, John O'Mahony.

The calls are broken down by malicious and good intent, with the number of malicious intent calls totalling more than 9,000 during that period.

In the larger urban areas, such as Dublin where over 7,800 false alarm calls were registered, nearly one in two calls were malicious in nature.

While the Department of the Environment does not calculate the cost of these calls to each local authority, it is estimated the pranks cost just short of €10m over five years.